Poetry: The Backward Glance
Photo by Sean Quillen I look back at myself climbing the nine mile Bright Angel trail of the Grand Canyon: halfway, she runs out of water, and must panhandle…
Poetry: Childhood’s Garden
Photo by John Cardamone Back when a star was something to wish on, all I knew was family, friends, home, street, and the-corner-grocer Mr. Wolf. Dogs were dogs and…
Poetry: Time Travel
My ten-year-old self climbs into her time machine, aims for age twenty-four, and over-shoots the mark. In the ballpark still, but landing with me, age eighty, she pouts, wants…
Poetry: Birth and Death
Like the trial run to the hospital when I was pregnant, I visit the San Luis cemetery with its stone and plastic-flowered landscape. Death comes with birth, yet my…
Poetry: If I Lost My Home by Wildfire
Photo by Mike Newbry on Unsplash (after Betsy Kahn’s Sipping Grief*) Would my sips of loss be for family photos or for our conversation gatherings in the kitchen and living…
Poetry: To The New Year
Photo by Sheila Swayze You burst from the starting gate and though I pull on the reins, I hang on for the ride, longing for 1940's snail-pace years when I…
Poetry: Shopping
It’s December, and I go to Mission Plaza to try on different lives. Inside the church, I inhale whispered prayers and notice how others do it. One woman kisses the…
Poetry: Bird-Voyeur
At the rookery, cormorants converse, a cacophony of baby-birds including egrets and herons calling for fish, more fish, more fish. They return yearly to nest over, under, and by each…
Poetry: Chances
Photo by Abed Ismail Each day I get another chance to stay in the present moment, to be grateful for being alive, another chance to give up sugar, another chance…
Poetry: That Longing To See
Photo by Jeanie Greensfelder After the atmospheric river soaks the Central Coast, I picture the ocean crashing over the jetty at Morro Rock. Once the roads clear, though wind and…